-----Original Message----- From: David L. Haury [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2003 9:26 AM To: NARST; AETS Subject: ERIC needs friends Importance: High Dear Colleagues, If you find the current ERIC system structure and services to be of professional value, I ask that you examine the information below and the Action Alerts attached, and consider how you might respond to the current plan to close all ERIC clearinghouses and delete all publication, user service, and outreach activities currently provided by the clearinghouses. Time is of the essence. Public comment on the draft statement of work will be accepted until May 9, and then the final Request for Proposals will be drafted. If this matter is important to you, please consider doing the following: a) Distribute one or both of the attached Action Alerts to colleagues, meeting participants, or professional Listservs at your earliest opportunity. b) Consider using the attached letter sample to draft a personal letter or a letter from associations to your congressional representatives and the Secretary of Education. Faxes on letterhead are considered most effective. Though this is a program funded by the U.S. government, I believe international voices would also influence decisions. Thanks for considering it. Current plans for reorganizing ERIC: 1. Eliminates all 16 ERIC Clearinghouses. The closing of the Clearinghouses will eliminate the long-lasting partnerships that ERIC has developed with rich discourse communities of researchers, practitioners, and parents. Under the proposed new Statement of Work, ERIC becomes an impersonal, automated database. 2. Eliminates personalized services. Many ERIC customers need direct contact with content specialists who can help them obtain information or clarification before searching the database. Others lack ready access to a computer or the skills required to navigate the database. But the draft SOW eliminates these personalized services: a. AskERIC and other Clearinghouse information services-these services respond to nearly 100,000 questions each year. b. Digests, books, and other publications. c. Clearinghouse Web sites. d. Networking and outreach activities. e. ERIC-sponsored Listservs. f. Referral services. 3. Reduces coverage of journal literature. The interdisciplinary nature of the ERIC database would suffer because the number of journals likely to be covered would be reduced from approximately 1,100 journals to fewer than 400. 4. Eliminates the ERIC synthesis function. ERIC Digests and major publications provide information in a format and language that makes this information more accessible to parents and teachers, for whom highly technical or scholarly writing is not always appropriate. 5. Restricts consumer access to information. The draft SOW specifies the development of "approved lists" of journals and document contributors. This strategy increases the possibility that bias can be introduced into database selection procedures. The draft SOW also calls for limiting database inclusion to only those items "directly related" to education. Education priorities change. If ERIC focuses its collection effort narrowly, or only on certain priorities, it may miss documents and journal articles that provide a balanced view of current issues or a longitudinal view of education trends. Research on information dissemination supports the current practice of reflecting a broad range of practices and views in the database. The ERIC database is essentially an archive or library that serves best by including contributions on a wide variety of topics and points of view. 6. Limits customer access to Web-based services and information. ERIC Clearinghouse-sponsored Web sites are heavily used. Collectively, these Web sites received 688 million Web accesses and more than 22.5 million unique visitors in 2002. Clearinghouse Web statistics suggest that ERIC users come to the Clearinghouse Web sites for many purposes other than searching the ERIC database. For example, in 2002, ERIC Digests were accessed more than 3.6 million times on Clearinghouse Web sites. Customers also use other full-text materials on these Web sites-FAQs, conference calendars, links, financial and scholarship information, and directories. Conclusion If the proposed changes do not reflect your vision of ERIC, p lease make your views known by May 9 to: Secretary of Education Rod Paige Fax: 202-401-0596 (on letterhead, please) Email: [log in to unmask] Your State's Senators: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm Your Congressional Representative: http://www.house.gov/writerep/ My apologies for the long message and multiple attachments, but I felt that all of you in the scholarly community of science educators would be interested and concerned. The proposed action will directly affect us all. Regards, David -- Associate Professor, Science Education Ohio State University *** Shedd Aquarium scanned this email for malicious content *** *** IMPORTANT: Do not open attachments from unrecognized senders *** ========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . 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